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Glamorgan, where, partly on account of rapid industrialization, the population increased from 71,525 in 1801 to 126,200 in 1831, was a county of large estates extending from the barren uplands and unfranchised iron town of Merthyr Tydfil in the north, to the corn-growing Vale, with its high concentration of freeholders, and the coastal boroughs of Cardiff, Neath and Swansea in the south.2 Industrial wealth ‘merged with traditional power with little animus, still less bloodshed’, but the traditional east-west rivalry, which followed the diocesan divide between St. Davids and Llandaff, persisted, despite the 1815 Act permitting elections at centrally located Bridgend. The 2nd marquess of Bute, who controlled the county’s second constituency, Cardiff Boroughs, was lord lieutenant, and he attended closely to Glamorgan politics in his correspondence with local agents and militia commanders, especially Peter Taylor Walker (whom he dismissed in 1821), Edward Priest Richards, Robert Rickards of Llantrisant, Henry Knight of Tythegston (d. 1825), and Richard Morgan of Llandough Castle. The representation was normally settled by the gentry at a pre-nomination meeting at the Pyle Inn, where the relative strengths of the candidates were considered, together with their ability to represent local interests.3

The freeholders had not been polled since 1780 and the influence of absentee aristocratic landowners, who included Bute, the 6th duke of Beaufort, the earls of Plymouth, Clarendon, Jersey and Talbot, Lord Dynevor, Sir Thomas Aubrey of Llantriddyd, and Sir Charles Kemeys Kemeys Tynte of Cefn Mabli, had been held in check by a coalition of resident gentlemen headed by Thomas Mansel Talbot of Penrice and Margam (34,000 acres) and Thomas Wyndham of Dunraven Castle, assisted by Jones of Ffonmon Castle, Pryce of Dyffryn, Aberdare, Matthews of Llandaff, the copper and tinmaster John Morris of Clasemont, Morgan of Ruperra and Tredegar, and Llewellyn of Penlle’rgaer. Minorities resulting from the deaths of Talbot in 1813 and of the sitting Member Wyndham the following year had heralded a spate of political activity and spending among this group and others with ambitions, among them the wealthy barrister John Edwards* of Rheola, who had married the heiress of Court Herbert, Robert Francis Jenner of Wenvoe, Sir John Nicholl* of Merthyr Mawr and William Vaughan of Lanelay. Benjamin Hall of Abecarn and Hensol, who had succeeded Wyndham in the seat, was a son-in-law of the industrialist William Crawshay of Cyfarthfa and the namesake son of the dean of Llandaff. The well-known sailor Sir Christopher Cole, the new husband of Talbot’s widow, had been returned following Hall’s early death in 1817, when he narrowly avoided a contest against Edwards by obtaining a declaration of support from the 5th earl of Stamford’s son, William Booth Grey, who had married the heiress of Dyffryn. Booth Grey, however, coveted the seat himself, and by declaring against Cole, when he was unable to spend in 1818, he had facilitated the unopposed return of Edwards at an estimated cost of £15,000.4

Canvassing by Cole, Edwards and Booth Grey and their supporters continued and culminated in a hard-fought contest at the general election of 1820, when Cardiff Boroughs also polled.5 Heightened party activity was evident from 31 Jan., and by 2 Feb. each candidate had issued handbills and letters soliciting gentry support. Edwards, who made a timely donation of 100 greatcoats, waistcoats, pairs of trousers and gaiters and 50 blankets to the poor of Neath, portrayed himself as the defender of the constitution and local interests; Booth Grey became the champion of the agriculturists, while Cole, who had been elected chairman of the county bench, relied primarily on Bute’s acquiescence, the Margam interest, fellow freemasons and servicemen.6 As had been anticipated, a meeting at Pyle, 10 Feb., launched a subscription fund, to which £19,700 was pledged towards Cole’s campaign. The treasurers of this ‘coalition of wealth’ were Henry John Grant, whose father had purchased the Gnoll Castle estate for £100,000 in 1808, the ironmaster Richard Hill of Llandaff House, and Morris’s former partner Thomas Lockwood, the developer of the Penvilia Vein collieries. Evan Thomas, a Radnorshire squire who had paid £40,000 for the Tyrwhitt Drakes’s Sully estate in 1811, headed the initial list of subscribers, among whom were Beaufort and Bute’s principal supporters in the boroughs of Cardiff, Cowbridge, Llantrisant, Loughor and Swansea; Wick Bennett, the Wyndham Quinns’ tenant at Dunraven Castle; Wyndham Lewis* of Greenmeadow, the candidate for Cardiff Boroughs, and his Dowlais partners; the ironmaster William Forman of Penydarren; the coppermaster Richard Blakemore of Felindre; the Swansea pottery manufacturer, Lewis Weston Dillwyn, who held Penlle’rgaer in trust for his son; Benjamin Hall; Thomas Hancorne of Oldcastle; Richard Hoare Jenkins of Llanharan; John Montgomery Traherne of St. Hilary; Morgan Popkin Traherne of Goitrehên; George Thomas of Ystrad, and Richard Turbervill Turbervill of Ewenny. Pledges from Morris, Nicholl and others followed.7 Edwards, whose colours were green and orange, relied heavily on his fellow lawyer and landowner, William Vaughan of Lanelay, whose name he adopted on inheriting his estates in 1829. His supporters included the land agent and landlord of the Cardiff Arms, John Bradley, John Bassett of Boulston, William Crawshay and his partners at the Cyfarthfa iron works, William Morgan and the Aberdare Coal Company, the 5th earl of Jersey, Samuel Homfray and his brother-in-law Sir Charles Morgan of Tredegar, who with Beaufort’s sons represented the neighbouring county of Monmouth, where retaliatory action was threatened.8 Absentees and officials of the Glamorgan Agricultural Society predominated on the list of Booth Grey’s committee at the Angel Inn, Cardiff, 25 Feb. They included John Hensleigh Allen*; the veteran Whig Sir John Aubrey*; John Bruce Bruce of Llanblethian, the heir apparent to Dyffryn; Capel Hanbury Leigh of Pontypool Park; John and Anthony Hill, the proprietors of the Plymouth ironworks; Wyndham Lewis of Llanishen; Jenner of Wenvoe; Robert Jones of Ffonmon; Morgan of Llandough; Thomas Bates Rous of Cwrtyrala; Sir Thomas Salusbury of Llewenny; Llewellyn Traherne of Coedrhuglan; Sir Charles Kemeys Kemeys Tynte* and Walter Wilkins*.9 On 3 Mar., relatively late in the campaign, the county met at Bridgend to adopt the customary addresses of condolence and congratulations, which were proposed by Booth Grey and seconded by Cole. Evan Thomas, Robert Jones, Bruce, Crawshay and Lockwood carried ancillary resolutions.10 Edwards was widely criticized as the representative of the ‘legal phalanx’, Nonconformists and small farmers, and was condemned for profiteering ‘at the expense of the poor’ from the Briton Ferry leases he had purchased from Jersey and for his subservience ‘to Tory ministers’. Disclosure that he was London-born undermined his claim to be the only Welsh candidate. Cole, who on 4 Mar. faced an angry mob at Swansea, where Edwards was fêted, strove to counter allegations that he was a locum for Talbot’s young son, Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot, ‘bound by 20,000 chains to be the representative of the Coal, Iron and Tin Company’. He also had difficulty refuting the Nonconformist minister Rees Jenkins’s charges that he opposed religious toleration and had stopped chapel building and sponsorship of Lady Barham’s schools on Margam’s Gower estates. Booth Grey was mocked as the candidate of the Corn Cutting Company.11

The election commenced at Bridgend, 16 Mar. 1820, when Cole was proposed by Morris and the Rev. John Montgomery Traherne, Edwards by Bassett and Crawshay, and Booth Grey by Robert Jones and Bruce. Their speeches were not reported. The bribery oath was administered in English and Welsh, and by the end of the first day 47 had polled for Cole, 45 for Edwards, and 27 for Booth Grey. At 320, 315, and 151 respectively on the third day, Bruce announced that Booth Grey was retiring, leaving his followers ‘to vote if and as they wished’, and he invited them to dine at the Angel, 4 Apr. Edwards made his ‘great push’ on the fourth day, when Sir Charles Morgan* and Homfray arrived ‘in great force of tenantry’, but ‘a great many’ were also sent down for Cole, most of whom ‘had promised Booth Grey first, and Cole if Booth Grey did not go on’. Cole ended the day with 433 votes to Edwards’s 418. After seven days Cole had 755 (677 polled, 32 rejected, and 46 unresolved) to Edwards’s 759 (607 polled, 72 rejected, 14 allowed, and 66 undecided), and polling ceased on the ninth day, 25 Mar., with 63 per cent of the electorate polled and the tally at Cole 791, Edwards 656, Booth Grey 151. Cole topped the poll in the hundreds of Cibwr, Llangyfelach, Miskin, Neath, Newcastle, Ogmore and Swansea, and Edwards, who led in the hundreds of Caerphilly, Cowbridge and Dinas Powis, retired ‘beaten but not subdued’. He subsequently attributed his defeat to Bute’s ‘late decision’ to oppose him. Cole was chaired amid the green laurels of Margam, dined his supporters, and announced that the election ball would be held at Swansea’s Mackworth Arms, 12 Apr. 1820.12 The deputy sheriff, Edward Priest Richards, charged £1,862 18s. 11d. for his services in the county, but nothing for his work in the Boroughs, which returned Lewis on the Bute interest after a seven-day poll.13

It has been shown (by Haydn Murray Williams) from analysis of the poll and check books, supported by scrutiny of declared supporters, proposers and seconders, that the aristocracy, lesser gentry, commercial and industrial interests did not act as distinct groups, and that the strength of the absentee landlords’ support for Cole was probably crucial. He confirmed the importance of family groupings, business associations, feuds and friendships, and found a close correlation between landlord-tenant and employer-employee votes which, he observed, was ‘determined by ownership and owed nothing to density of population or to occupation’. Virtually all Beaufort, Dynevor and Clarendon tenants voted for Cole, but only 46 per cent of Bute’s, many of whom defected to Booth Grey. In Swansea, where Beaufort controlled the corporation, 45 freeholders voted for Cole, 68 for Edwards, and none for Booth Grey. Cole received 29 votes, and Booth Grey and Edwards 15 each from Bute’s stronghold of Cardiff; and the freeholders of Merthyr Tydfil provided Cole with 34 votes, Edwards 40, and Grey seven. Bute, who had rejected or ignored Edwards’s recommendations for the magistracy, was particularly fearful that use of his name would be construed as intervention by a peer. He had cautioned his agents against spending in the county, but directed them to procure what votes they could for Cole, so incurring the wrath of Booth Grey, whom Bute had formerly considered returning for the Boroughs. The Margam agents acted reciprocally, but the pollbooks confirm contemporaneous observations by Dillwyn and others that switching between the parties in the two constituencies was widespread and even extended to the candidates’ sponsors.14 After the election Windham Henry Wyndham Quinn, whose son William was heir presumptive to Dunraven, took action against 23 tenants who voted for Edwards instead of Cole. The new Member was stoned as he passed Cyfarthfa, and James Jacob, Bute’s Llantrisant bailiff, was dismissed for his disloyalty in backing Booth Grey.15 When applied to, 21 Aug. 1820, Bute refused to contribute to Cole’s fund. He was informed that the cost to Cole was ‘about £16,000, to defray which the gentlemen of the county have subscribed £7,000 and the trustees of the Margam estate £3,000’.16

The Glamorganshire Agricultural Society, which met quarterly, petitioned both Houses for action against distress in May and June 1820, forwarded corn returns to the Commons agriculture committee, and petitioned again in 1821, when local divisions were evident in the wording of the petitions. Some complained of distress in all sectors of the economy and advocated tax reductions as remedies, others merely asked Parliament to investigate and relieve their distress, as they saw fit.17 Except for Llangyfelach and Llandeilo-Talybont, whose address and petition in the Welsh language caused a stir, petitions criticizing Queen Caroline’s prosecution and for the restoration of her name to the liturgy were confined to the Boroughs.18 The Lords received petitions opposing Catholic relief from the deaneries of East and West Gower, 8 Apr. 1821.19 Petitions were got up in 1822 for repeal of the malt duty and the leather tax and greater protection for agriculture, and the handful of hostile votes cast by Cole and his endorsement of the agriculturists’ distress petitions, 12 Feb., were popularly acclaimed.20 There was also widespread support among the industrialists and magistracy for abolition of the Welsh courts of great sessions and separate judicature. The Swansea attorney Robert Nelson’s testimony to the 1820 and 1821 select committees complained bitterly of the inconvenience and inefficiencies of the system, notwithstanding the usefulness of concessit solvere in recovering small debts, and, endorsing Swansea’s claim to full assize town status, he claimed that jurors from west Glamorgan were liable to serve oftener than those from the east despite the 60 mile journey to Cardiff, where witnesses and jurymen were frequently obliged to lodge and eat together. A petition adopted by the sheriff and grand jury at the April 1822 great sessions complained that the system’s defects outweighed its advantages and called for ‘one and the same system ... in England and Wales’; and the issue featured strongly in letters to Bute and the Cambrian, before Allen’s abolition motion was withdrawn, 16 May 1822.21 Distress remained acute;22 and Bute was informed after the December 1822 magistrates’ meeting:

You will see by the resolutions at Pyle that we are quite alive to the interests of the commerce of this county. Would to God some genius would invent other plans to benefit the agricultural class, or to give fresh life to the dying embers which are consuming them. The poor dejected farmer, wishing to catch at every twig before he is overwhelmed, is now crying out for war, forgetting that though such an event may raise the price of his stock and produce for the time, the reckoning day must come at last.23

The resolutions were incorporated in the landowners’ and agriculturists’ petitions to Parliament in March and April 1823.24 Ministers chose to disregard a petition of complaint from the magistrates at the £5,000 cost of implementing changes required under the 1823 Consolidated Gaol Act, 19 Feb. 1824. Llangyfelach and the Glamorgan Canal Company joined in the petitioning for repeal of the coastwise coal duty, 19, 23 Feb., 31 May 1824, 25 Feb. 1825, and Merthyr Tydfil petitioned against the tax on beer, 19 May 1824.25 Petitioning against corn law revision persisted, 28 Apr., and the iron manufacturers also lobbied and adopted petitions for protective tariffs, 9 June 1825.26 The Dyffryn Llynfi railway bill was passed that session, and plans were laid for a new bridge at Foxhole, notwithstanding opposition from Blakemore and John Henry Vivian;27 and the following year, Jersey and his friends succeeded in rushing the Aberdulais railroad bill through the Lords before complaints endorsed by Dillwyn, Capel Hanbury Leigh and Henry Tennant of the Neath Canal Company had been properly addressed.28 The Members, gentry and manufacturers acted promptly to limit the damage caused by the collapse in December 1825 of Gibbins and Eaton’s Swansea bank, which brought down Haynes and Company at Neath and put pressure on the reserves of Wilkins and Company and the Dowlais Company’s Merthyr bank, Guest Lewis and Guest, who issued their own notes to maintain public confidence and ensure that their workers were paid.29 Bridgend meanwhile petitioned the Lords in favour of the merchant and creditors bill, 19 May 1826.30 Petitioning against colonial slavery gathered momentum, and both Houses received petitions from the county’s landowners and occupiers against the 1826 corn importation bill.31

A conflict of interests had developed between Bute and the Dowlais and Glamorganshire canal companies over land leases, communications, the Western Union Canal bill and the development of Cardiff; and since February 1824 a canvass had been under way to prevent Bute returning his brother Lord James Crichton Stuart for the Boroughs, which Lewis refused to relinquish.32 It was expected that the campaign would extend to the county, where Edwards and Booth Grey were said to be interested in offering and Talbot was newly of age, and also to Monmouth Boroughs, where Beaufort was experiencing local difficulties.33 Being unmarried, Talbot could not gain full control of his estates until his 25th birthday in 1828, and Bute correctly surmised that his political aspirations were held in check by the subscribers to Cole’s fighting fund.34 Cole, who was regularly praised in the Cambrian, had gleaned support in Swansea through his masonic contacts and opposition to slavery and the coal duties; while his occasional demonstrations of independence and attention to constituency opinion and local legislation were widely appreciated.35 By June 1825, Edwards had transferred his aspirations to Wells, and Talbot, having resigned himself to remaining out of the next Parliament, declared for Crichton Stuart in Cardiff Boroughs in February 1826, so keeping the Bute-Margam alliance intact in both constituencies. Cole already had promises of support from Beaufort, Grant and Sir Charles Morgan.36 Squib writers, as usual, ridiculed him as Talbot’s stooge, but his return in 1826 was unopposed. He and his sponsors, Dillwyn and Morgan Popkin Traherne, stressed his independence and ability to manage the diverse interests of so underrepresented a county. Talbot attended the election, and on the hustings Cole acknowledged his debt to Margam, but insisted that self-respect had made him his own man. One-hundred-and-ninety-five dined in Bridgend town hall, another 330 elsewhere, and the election ball was held in Swansea in October 1826. The Boroughs were not contested.37

With much local legislation intended, Bute, Crawshay, Edwards, Grant, Booth Grey, Morris and Vivian attended a meeting at Pyle in September 1826 to discuss Telford’s plan for a new east-west road and to consider establishing a single countywide turnpike trust on the Breconshire model. Morris and the Dowlais ironmaster John Josiah Guest* were to promote it and the meeting approved it by 89-80. Local interests, however, intervened, and lobbying and petitioning led by Blakemore, Vivian, the Neath and Swansea trusts, and others with commercial concerns to protect, ensured that all the objectives of the 1827 Act were not realized.38 Sir John Nicholl, who had constructed the Ogmore bridge on the Bridgend road, resisted all attempts to take the Dyffryn Llynfi line through his land to Ogmore, and corrective legislation, sponsored mainly by the Dowlais Company, was carried, routing it though the Margam estate to Porthcawl.39 Blakemore, Crawshay and the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire canal companies led the opposition to the 1830 Bute (Cardiff) ship canal bill. They succeeded in securing amendments and delaying its progress in committee with their petitions, but Dowlais and Sir Charles Morgan supported it, Guest and Cole shepherded it through the Commons, and it received royal assent (by commission), 16 July 1830, shortly before the dissolution.40 Cardiff continued to lead the campaign for repeal of the coastwise coal duties which placed the Glamorgan ports at a disadvantage with Monmouthshire’s, and from 1829 their petitions and submissions to the Commons select committee were organized and co-ordinated by Walter Coffin of Llandaff Court, who asked Guest and Thomas Frankland Lewis to support their case. Cole and Crichton Stuart remained supportive.41

Population pressure, lawlessness and the absence of magistrates who were not themselves ironmasters had long been a problem in Merthyr Tydfil. After failing to interest Peel in sponsoring legislation in 1827, Bute and John Bruce Bruce submitted a memorial and petition for a police bill and the establishment of a stipendiary magistracy. Bute was assured that Crawshay, Guest, and Forman would help to finance it, to reduce the potential burden on the poor rate.42 It was clear before the petition for the bill was presented, 17 Mar. 1828, that it would be opposed by Peel and Alderman William Thompson, Forman’s partner in the Penydarren Works, and it was lost on a technicality, 26 Mar.43 Popular clamour for action continued, and an amended bill was brought in by Cole, 9 Mar., and committed to Guest, 13 Mar. 1829. It was delayed in committee. Edwards, who wanted Henry Sockett made stipendiary magistrate, campaigned actively and with some success against Bute’s planned appointment of Bruce, who had unwisely already canvassed Thompson and Alexander Powell.44 Peel eventually approved Bruce’s appointment, 27 May, and the bill received royal assent, 1 June 1829. Bruce derived half his £600 salary and £100 for a clerk from the poor rate; and the ironmasters, assessed according to the number and size of their blast furnaces, paid the remainder.45 The farmers of the Vale strongly opposed Canning and Huskisson’s corn importation bill, and Bridgend petitioned accordingly in March and May 1827, when a county meeting recommended a 70s. pivot price. Evan David of Radyr, who, as secretary of the Agricultural Society, took charge of petitions, declined Bute’s invitation to testify before the select committee to prove the petitioners’ assertion that corn had been imported below 25s.46 Dissenters and Nonconformist congregations countywide petitioned for repeal of the Test Acts in 1827 and 1828.47 The county’s Welsh Calvinistic Methodists were vehemently opposed to Catholic relief and petitioned accordingly, 29 Apr., 6 June 1828, but in 1829 opinion was divided, and no county meeting was called. Both Houses now received hostile petitions from the chapels of Merthyr Tydfil, Llangyfelach and Llandeilo-Talybont and several parishes in Gower and the Vale, and only Cardiff and the Unitarians of Merthyr Tydfil petitioned favourably. Most petitions were known to be respectably and conscientiously signed, and were defended as such.48

The campaign for abolition of the Welsh judicature and assize system, which Dillwyn worked closely with the earl of Cawdor to achieve, revived following the appointment of an investigative commission in February 1828, and the October sessions at Swansea adopted a memorial (signed by 85 magistrates) for ‘abolition of the provincial judicature of Wales, and a participation in the benefits derived from the authority of English judges’, as advocated in Cawdor’s Letter to lord chancellor Lyndhurst.49 Dillwyn prepared a report and drafted most of Bute and Cole’s pro-abolition testimony to the commission, which was confirmed, with a few reservation, in submissions from Allen, Coffin, Dynevor, Guest, Sir Charles Morgan and Evan Thomas, and the issue dominated the correspondence columns of the Cambrian.50 In their March 1829 report, the commissioners proposed making Neath the assize town for a new administrative district covering Glamorgan and the Breconshire hundreds of Builth, Crickhowell and Talgarth when the judicature was abolished. This threatened Cardiff’s assize town status and Swansea’s aspirations and created ‘a great degree of interest in Merthyr Tydfil and its vicinity’, where, so Bute was informed

The inhabitants ... are very desirous that in the proposed change the locality of Merthyr and its central situation should be taken into consideration as they conceive it as better adapted for many reasons to be the assize town than Neath or any other town in the county. Under these impressions, a meeting of the inhabitants of Merthyr was convened and it was very numerously and respectably attended. The meeting resolved unanimously that your lordship as lord lieutenant of the county should be memorialized on the occasion, it being believed that from your lordship’s liberal views of public measures generally and your attachment to the interests of the county of Glamorgan, their sentiments would meet with your lordship’s support and attention provided your lordship would think them meriting it.51

Nothing came of the idea, nor of Thomas Wood’s* proposal, which Bute preferred, of combining Breconshire with Glamorgan, and holding assizes at Brecon and Cardiff. The Rev. J.M. Traherne’s ‘misgivings’ that Glamorgan would be brought into the anti-abolition petitioning campaign in November 1829 by means of an ‘an embryo county meeting’ were soon dispelled.52The Times stressed Glamorgan’s support for abolition, ministers confirmed Cardiff’s assize town status and, Dynevor and his son, George Rice Rice Trevor* excepted, few associated with the county opposed the 1830 administration of justice bill through which the change was enacted. Swansea revived and pursued its campaign with renewed vigour until granted leave to hold the summer assizes in 1834.53 The gaols and poor houses were full when Glamorgan agriculturists joined the 1830 petitioning campaign for action against the distress ‘faced by agriculture and commerce’, which ‘all the industrious classes alike suffer’, and urged repeal of the malt duties. Meanwhile, petitions from Merthyr Tydfil and the depressed industrial towns called for lower taxes and an end to the truck system. This local shopkeepers petitioned to retain, on account of specie shortages which they attributed to the 1826 Small Notes Act.54 The threat of unrest was ever present, and militia exercises continued after direct government funding ceased in 1828. These were deliberately timed to coincide with slack periods in the farming season, to accommodate the recruits.55

Cole’s remuneration from the Margam estate had ceased, and with an eye to the next election Bute had permitted him to make full use of Cardiff Castle for the October races in 1829, which Talbot stewarded. Briefing Bute afterwards on what the occasion revealed about Glamorgan politics, the Rev. J.M. Traherne, who was shortly to marry Talbot’s sister Charlotte, observed, ‘There [now] appears to be a general disposition to quit electioneering. The other side has had enough of it’.56 When George IV’s death was expected, Talbot informed his agent Griffith Llewellyn, 7 June 1830, that arrangements for him to succeed Cole were in place:

It is unlikely there will be any opposition, but I am prepared if there is to raise a sum of money on the purchased estates which will be conveyed to me by the trustees. At all events, who is there in the county who has both a claim to represent the county, and money to support that claim?57

Cole chaired a masonic dinner at Swansea, 24 June, the king died on the 26th, and by 8 July Cole had informed Bute, Crawshay, Dillwyn and Vivian that he was retiring because of his wife’s deteriorating health.58 Talbot, who had land and strong kinship connections throughout the county, appointed Griffith Llewellyn and his brothers as his general agents, and informed them, 7 July, that he and Cole thought it

quite unnecessary to employ any person to canvass unless there is a show of opposition. I will send the books of freeholders as soon as I can obtain them from him. As soon as you have seen Sir Christopher’s advertisement of resignation, you may send the letters to the attorneys, and I shall write immediately to the principal gentlemen and absentee noblemen ... I shall have my letters ready to send on Saturday, but not the address, because I have reason to think Sir Christopher does not wish mine to follow too close on his, as far as the public eye is concerned. My plan of operations is to come to Margam on Monday and to commence a canvass as soon as the king’s funeral has taken place ... I think one of the following persons should be requested to propose me: Evan Thomas, Sir J. Morris, Grant, Grey, Dillwyn or Jenner.59

On the 9th Bute, who had already heard from Talbot, learnt that ‘Beaufort, Lord Clarendon and Lord Plymouth wished to raise an opposition but were unable to do so’.60 Cole’s retirement notice appeared in the Cambrian, 10 July, and alongside it a letter from ‘Argus’ stating that his fears had been confirmed, and warning that unless an alternative candidate could be found, the freemen would be handed over to Talbot ‘like a flock of sheep’.61 Cole took his family to Cowes before Talbot’s addresses were published, 17 July. Bruce’s brother John Lewis Knight*, who had been expected to stand backed down. Another likely contender, William Williams (the defeated candidate at Seaford), was disqualified as sheriff from standing. He had returned to Aberpergwm in 1829 after a 14-year absence and could call on his brother John’s Neath bank and the interest of the 2nd earl of Dunraven, to whom his brother Thomas was chaplain.62 As Talbot was to remark, his opponents proved to be ‘idle phantoms [who] constantly arise in rapid succession, only to be demolished and prove themselves men of straw’.63 Talbot canvassed vigorously, often accompanied by Dillwyn. He attended Crichton Stuart’s election at Cardiff and was returned at Bridgend, proposed, as he had hoped he would be, by Morris and seconded by Bruce, whose brother, the Rev. William Bruce Knight, rector of Margam and dean of Llandaff, also spoke strongly in his support.64 Talbot, who chose to interpret his return as a victory for the Whigs,65 warned the county of the difficulties involved in representing the divergent interests of agriculture, manufacturing, shipping and commerce, and tried to rally all parties behind him by declaring his support for religious toleration. He projected himself as

a sincere friend to every measure calculated to promote the liberty of the subject, the retrenchment and economy of the public expenditure, the relief of the people from the burden of taxation under which they labour, to better the situation of the agricultural labourer, and to advance the general interests of trade and commerce ... So long as ministers continue to consult the real and substantial interests of the community at large, they will command my uniform and best support on every occasion that I can honestly give it to them.

Keeping a close scrutiny on expenditure, he dined 200 at the Wyndham Arms, where he refuted allegations that Cole had been his locum, and was eulogized in Welsh verse. His health was proposed by Crichton Stuart. A further 1,300 were dined at other hostelries in Bridgend and the ball was held in Swansea after the October races.66 Arriving in London in November, Talbot sensed the impending demise of the Wellington ministry and prepared to vote against them on reform, but he did not divide on the civil list when they were brought down, 15 Nov. 1830.67

Wesleyan Methodists countywide and the Baptists of Caerphilly, Dowlais and Merthyr Tydfil sent petitions to both Houses in November 1830 and April 1831 for the abolition of colonial slavery.68 Petitions against the truck system and for repeal of the coastwise coal duty were also forthcoming; and a new road bill received royal assent, 22 Apr. 1831.69 Led by Booth Grey, J.M. Traherne and Col. Richard Morgan, the magistrates and militia commanders reacted swiftly to an outbreak of incendiarism in the Vale in December 1830, arranging patrols and establishing a society for the improvement of the working population, under the patronage of Llewellyn Traherne and others friendly to Bute.70 Distress in the ironfields had reached unprecedented levels when a meeting at Merthyr Tydfil parish church, 23 Dec. 1830, petitioned for the dismissal of placemen, annual or triennial parliaments, transfer of the franchise from close and decayed boroughs to large towns, and the vote by ballot for all local and national taxpayers. Another meeting, chaired by Evan Griffith at Aberdare, 13 Jan. 1831, petitioned for reform, universal male suffrage, the ballot, and annual parliaments. Both petitions were entrusted to Guest and received by the Commons, 7 Feb.71 They received Bridgend’s petition for reform and the ballot, 25 Feb., and it was presented to the Lords on the 28th.72 The Commons also received petitions for tithe reform from the hundreds of Cowbridge, 25 Feb., and Newcastle, 16 Mar. 1831.73

As announced, 1 Mar. 1831, the Grey ministry’s reform bill proposed no change in the county constituency, but the Boroughs were to be divided, with Cardiff retaining Cowbridge and Llantrisant and acquiring Llandaff and Merthyr Tydfil, while its remaining contributories were regrouped around Swansea, where Vivian immediately declared his candidature. Talbot supported the measure and was surprised that his boroughs of Aberavon and Kenfig retained their franchise.74 Bridgend sent a favourable petition to the Commons, requesting inclusion in the Cardiff group, 15 Mar.; and Merthyr, where William Crawshay junior, a staunch reformer, chaired the meeting, petitioned for the bill and independent representation, 16 Mar.75 Swansea names predominated on the requisition for the county reform meeting at Pyle, 23 Mar., which was chaired by the deputy sheriff, the Neath attorney Alexander Cuthbertson. The resolutions carried called for the swift passage of the reform bill and additional representation for Glamorgan, and Bassett, Coffin, John Hodder Moggridge, Rous, the Trahernerns, Vivian and William Williams, who, as ‘Gwladwr’, wrote regularly to the local press, were among the main speakers. The meeting urged Guest, Crichton Stuart, Talbot, and all Members connected with the county to support reform and their petitions. That favourable to the bill was received by the Lords, 25 Mar., and the Commons, 28 Mar., in the name of the sheriff and sole signatory Richard Hoare Jenkins. That for additional representation, which Bute supported despite his opposition to the bill, was signed by the magistrates at the Easter sessions at Cowbridge, and presented to the Commons, 15 Apr.76 Meanwhile, as agreed at a second Merthyr Tydfil meeting chaired by Crawshay junior, 8 Apr., Bute, Guest, Lewis and Talbot, possibly accompanied by Crichton Stuart and Thompson, met the leader of the House Lord Althorp, 11, 18 Apr. 1831, to press Merthyr Tydfil’s case for separate representation. They pointed out that the 1821 census had been ‘scandalously taken ... by a drunken clerk of the friendly society’ and that its population had then been 23,500, which gave it a better claim to separate enfranchisement than ‘the paltry town of Frome’ and the Staffordshire iron towns. Their request was refused, but ministers announced on the 18th that Glamorgan would receive a second Member, ostensibly because its population was over 100,000.77

Booth Grey sought support for an anti-reform declaration headed by Bute, Clarendon, Dynevor, and Jersey; and Talbot, who sought re-election at the general election precipitated by the bill’s defeat, 19 Apr. 1831, sensed correctly that Crawshay, Edwards Vaughan and Thompson were intriguing against him.78 His failure to vote on the civil list had caused offence, and he was obliged to canvass assiduously, concentrating on ‘independent people, not tenantry’, and on the Gower, where the gentry complained they had been neglected in 1830. His cause was furthered by the popularity of reform, and the concurrent campaign for the first post-reform election proved to be a useful distraction. Dillwyn, Guest, Jenner and John Nicholl junior had already declared, and Crawshay, Grey, Kemeys Tynte, John Lewis Knight and William Williams were known to be interested.79 Talbot was proposed at Bridgend, 6 May, by Dillwyn and seconded by Rous, who made much of his commitment to reform and restoring Margam as the county’s premier centre of culture and hospitality. When questioned about the candidature of his brother-in-law Nicholl, Talbot sought to avoid embarrassment by stressing their personal friendship and political differences. He explained that he supported reform because large communities were ‘outgrowing the dimensions of their political institutions’, making redistribution of the franchise necessary to increase confidence in the political system, and because he thought the bill would bring Glamorgan great benefits. He dined 200 supporters and all the inns were thrown open.80 A meeting at Merthyr Tydfil, 27 Apr., convened by the Unitarians Christopher James, William Perkins and Taliesin ap Iolo, and backed by Crawshay and the political union, had resolved to transport local voters free of charge to support reform candidates in neighbouring Monmouthshire and Breconshire, where Thomas Wood, a Tory who had pragmatically voted for the bill, 22 Mar., defeated the reform candidate. Mobs attacked the homes of three of Wood’s Merthyr supporters when they returned from Brecon, 9 May, arrests and further rioting followed, and the extremists prevailed at a reform meeting attended by between 8,000 and 10,000 on Waun Common, 30 May. Marching under the ‘red flag of reform with a loaf of bread on top’, on 3 June they targeted Crawshay and other ironmasters who had cut wages. The Glamorgan militia and regular troops were called in, fatalities ensued, and the reputation for lawlessness so acquired undermined the campaign for separate representation for Merthyr Tydfil, which Members associated with South Wales resolutely pursued in the 1831 Parliament. The Glamorgan militia was found inefficient and disbanded.81 The only local legislation carried was the Llanfabon and Pont-y-moel roads bill, promoted in the Commons by the new reform Member for Monmouthshire, William Addams Williams.82

The reintroduced reform bill made no separate provision for Merthyr Tydfil, and early in July 1831 Wood agreed to lead the parliamentary campaign for its separate enfranchisement, which, as he scathingly acknowledged, was an awkward issue for Crichton Stuart and Talbot as pro-reform Whigs.83 Talbot’s difficulties were in any case compounded by Crawshay and Thompson’s mistrust and his private fear of ‘the awful power of the lower classes’.84 Bute and Crichton Stuart presented Cardiff, Cowbridge and Merthyr Tydfil’s petitions for the bill and a separate Merthyr constituency, 4, 9 Aug., when, comparing Merthyr with the lesser Staffordshire iron towns of Walsall and Wolverhampton, Crichton Stewart protested that it was unfair and maintained that Cardiff was in danger of being ‘reduced to a mere suburb of Merthyr, which is 25 miles off’. Wood failed by 164-123 to exclude Merthyr from the Cardiff group, 10 Aug., but Knight, Crichton Stuart, Talbot, Thompson and South Wales Members of all parties backed him.85 Ministers argued that Merthyr Tydfil had been accommodated through increased county representation and encouraged divisions among its apologists by suggesting that it could be added to Swansea, or leaving Cardiff Boroughs unchanged so that Merthyr Tydfil could have its own Member. On 15 Aug. 1831 Lord Grey informed Bute that Merthyr Tydfil’s case had been fully examined and rejected.86 Celebrations to mark William IV’s coronation in September were dampened by fears of violence at Merthyr Tydfil, where reform and political union meetings continued; and the bill’s Lords’ defeat heralded further meetings which criticized Bute and the bishop of Llandaff for failing to support it.87 Despite further lobbying, Merthyr Tydfil remained a mere contributory of Cardiff in the revised bill, and from January 1832 the campaign for its separate enfranchisement was pursued with renewed vigour, promoted locally by Bruce and the ironmasters, assisted by the Nonconformists and ‘shopocracy’, and in London by Bute, Guest, Knight, Crichton Stuart, Thompson and Wood. There were fears that Crawshay had become hostile to the idea because his father refused to free him from managing the works to enter Parliament, and he did not wish to see Merthyr Tydfil represented by Guest or Thompson.88 Wood’s attempt to substitute Merthyr Tydfil for Gateshead in schedule D failed by 214-167, 5 Mar., but the division was better than expected and they had carried the debate.89 On 14 Mar. Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare petitioned the Commons for omission from the Cardiff group should their separate enfranchisement be rejected, and shortly afterwards Russell announced that they would receive the third Member intended for Monmouthshire. Bute and his allies acquiesced in the decision, which Talbot privately regarded as ‘a job’ that discredited ministers and emanated from a desire to curb Beaufort’s influence. The necessary amendments were carried, 14 Mar., but there was general annoyance in South Wales at the treatment of Monmouthshire.90 Robert Jones of Ffonmon rallied support for Grey in May 1832 when a ministry headed by the duke of Wellington was in contemplation, jeopardizing the bill, but the prompt restoration of the Grey ministry made petitioning unnecessary.91

Guest had transferred his candidature from the county to Merthyr and Aberdare, where, despite rumblings of opposition and formal protest by Bruce, who, as the designated returning officer, was disqualified from standing, the 502 registered £10 voters returned Guest unopposed in December 1832.92 Talbot’s election for the county was assured, although he still feared that the ‘Merthyr men will get somebody up’. By July, when Dunraven declared for him and Dillwyn, they were considered unassailable. Nicholl announced his retirement in June, Jenner and Williams in July, and notwithstanding rumours that Talbot was standing down because of debts or elevation to the peerage, and overtures from and to Beaufort, Bute, Edwards Vaughan, Grant, Grey, John Lewis Knight, and Sir Charles Morgan and his son Charles Morgan Robinson Morgan* of Ruperra, no resident Conservative candidate emerged. Jersey remained hostile to Talbot, but even with Bute and Lord Granville Somerset’s backing, his son Lord Villiers*, ‘an outsider’, had little prospect of success.93 In the absence of better candidates, Beaufort and Bute, who had asked Talbot to define his political views, acquiesced in the returns of Dillwyn, Guest, Talbot and Vivian, thus facilitating the election for Cardiff Boroughs of Nicholl, for whom Bute and the Conservatives secured the chairmanship of the county bench.94 Absentee and resident landowners and their agents attended closely to the registration of 3,591 county electors in the designated polling towns of Bridgend, Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, Neath and Swansea in October: 820, 521, 505, 400, 303, 259, 230, 201, 197, and 155 respectively from the hundreds of Swansea, Llangyfelach, Caerphilly, Newcastle, Neath, Cowbridge, Miskin, Cibwr, Dinas Powis and Ogmore - totals which ‘confirmed the supremacy of the West’.95 Talbot retained a seat for the Liberals until the county, which was contested in 1837, 1857 and 1874, was reorganized into three single Member constituencies in 1885. The Conservatives first returned a Member in 1837, when Dunraven’s heir Lord Adare defeated Guest to take the second seat. Bipartisan representation prevailed for the next 20 years, but from 1857 the county was solidly Liberal.